Especially when those tits look familiar.

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The above statement is not a very valid one.

Oh shit, I can't do this anymore...

Was the whole show at least entertaining?



Steph said:
"Beer and a 2 hour drive don't mix well."

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On this topic somewhat I read a book called Brothel,which is about a lady who did research(supposedly)at the Mustang Ranch.It was an interesting read,mostly what I came away with was the mundane aspect of the women's jobs and how even though it's more structured than say,hooking on the street,they weren't that much happier.

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This is a more believable methodology for taking a "behind the scenes" look at the goings on at a brothel.

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"If you're making [a documentary] to compete, you want it to be hot, and racy, and present. You can't P.T. Barnum a show about the Mississippi Delta, but you can P.T. Barnum a show about a cathouse." (Sheila Nevins, HBO's executive vice president for original programming)

Some of the best work in non-fiction films lives side by side with work whose veracity and ethics are highly suspect.

If Nevins were writing this article, she would lead with the high-impact, controversial stuff designed to catch and hold your attention. Like the fact that whorehouse clients who appeared in HBO's recent hidden-camera "expose," Cathouse, were paid for their participation, despite the fact that many filmmakers and journalists find this ethically questionable. That the asking prices which the film shows the "working girls" charging their clients - $700- $3000 - were routinely lowered once the cameras stopped rolling, thus raising questions about the filmmaker's need to aggrandize situations in order to fuel prurient interest. That the Moonlight Bunny Ranch brothel owner, Dennis Hof, a self-described "media whore," had actively shopped his cathouse story to various other networks before landing at HBO, hoping it would become The Osbournes of sex (he wasn't paid). And finally, that the "brothers" depicted in the "Two Brothers" segment are not brothers at all, but rather a comedy team whose fictitious sibling identity was created for a women's bare-knuckle fighting video titled Brawlin' Broads.

The brothers' true identity would seem to be relevant, considering that their fraternal nature added to the lasciviousness of the segment. But if you speak with the film's director, Patti Kaplan, the force behind HBO's Real Sex series, she admits that no post-filming fact-checking whatsoever was done to verify that what participants said about themselves was true. "What do I care?" Kaplan says.

Cathouse is part of HBO's ongoing documentary series America Undercover... When pressed about these credibility gaps, Nevins seems to place herself disturbingly in teh sole position of deciding which subjects warrant integrity of presentation and which provide free rein to be loosey-goosey with both facts and ethics.

"I don't want to talk about controversies about a show that's so unimportant," she says, her voice rising. "Why make a show that's so ridiculously two-dimensional into something important? Why do you care whether we paid or didn't pay people who were jerking off in a cathouse?"

She points to the many worthy and high-quality docs she's produced. "You don't bleed heart and brain over a show like Cathouse. It's about hooking! It's about whores! If it's about whores, you whore; if it's about profundity, you 'profound'!"

In and of itself, the Cathouse controversy adds up to little but careless work by a filmmaker charged with delivering a titillating piece of fluff that was designed to draw big numbers. Paying participants a nominal fee is not the documentary crime it seems on first blush, despite the unseemly timing of offering movie money to people who had just negotiated the price of sex. There's little chance that remuneration substantially altered the content of Cathouse. Since everything -- from the gratuitous nude-sunbathing scene to the faux camera reticle posted in over the hidden camera footage -- was essentially exploitative sensationalism, such misrepresentation and sloppy fact-checking seem like harmless trangressions.

Edited by - Crucifixio_Jones on 2/6/2005 4:53:06 AM

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PL mentioned he watched "The Mind of the Married Man." Well, holy shit. My best friend and myself aren't the only ones who liked that show. I don't feel so bad for having all the episodes on tape now. Of course now that it is long cancelled the only place I can ever see it is on my tape.

I didn't see "The Cathouse" but I can understand Crucifixo_Jones' consternation. I am currently struggling to figure out just how much of "Family Business" is staged, despite Seymour Butts' claims that it's mostly real.

Kelly

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Yeah. I know "Family Business" is staged. It is pretty fucking obvious. However, I took that feeling over to Seymour's website (www.teamtushy.com) and asked about it on their message board and he pretty much denied that it was staged. And then I heard from a girl who had actually be on the show that it was not quite as staged as I had imagined.

THere's no doubt it is staged. I am just trying to figure out what miniscule percentage of it is real.

Kelly

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Fear is the mind-killer.

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the fees did seem overly priced for an hour long session with an escort, hooker or whatever they were calling themselves on the show. who in their right mind would pay $3000 for no less then two or three girls to be in the same room with them?!?!

the couples didn't bother me so much as the older woman who went there because her husband couldn't get an erection any longer and told her it was okay if she slept with women someone at this moment wake me up from the Twilight Zone and tell me I didn't hear that. not only did he saw go, but he wasn't there to even watch aside from that she said she'd never even been with women before, but the whole thing was "sweet" and "lovely" when it was all over.

someone stop the madness!!!

the shows about the blind dates and how the women reacted when he told them what he did. if you're going for honesty, just be honest. when he says he's a "sometimes star" in his films I could've fell down and busted my head on the floor. having one leg it could've been easy, but I caught myself.

forget about cousin steve's idiot antics on the show, and the fact that he rolls his eyes everytime his mother tries to set him up with a girl. DUDE! it's your mother and she wants more grandchildren, don't be a bitch about it. it wasn't even the way he treated Bishop like he was his dog, and was pretty much worthless. believe me I work for a guy like this and he's probably holding back all the really "nice" things he'd say to him when the cameras are off.

the BIGGEST problem for me about this show when I finally decided to watch no more was how he acted like he was the king and god of all porno land sitting behind his desk in his chair with a few awards on otherwise empty shelves.

yeah, you take a stroll on over to Buttman's office and see the almost twenty years of awards and paraphernalia--er, I mean memorabilia he has. I'll stop there before I turn into some raving fanboy about my favorite adult company, but it pretty much speaks for itself. some people do what they can for money. that goes for the owner of the bunny ranch and the guy who has a "family business."

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I think that "advertising" those prices will just keep people, who had considered stopping by, from ever going there at all. Granted, it may help them jack the prices up for the people who don't know any better. But overall, I would think that it would hurt business.

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